Recently, Tarmotog wrote an article about Singleton 100 over on another website. In addition to discussing the changes — like allowing sideboards — he also bemoaned the lack of combo in the format.
Singleton 100 is a Magic Online-only format. It is singleton, meaning that, with the exception of basic land cards, a player’s deck may not contain more than one of any individual card. The 100 means that decks must contain a minimum of one hundred cards.
The format used to forbid sideboards, but that has changed. The banned list includes these cards: Crucible of Worlds, Flash, Gifts Ungiven, Gleemox, Grindstone, Imperial Seal, Intuition, Life from the Loam, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Mana Crypt, Skullclamp, Umezawa’s Jitte, Upheaval, and Vampiric Tutor,
Possible Combos:
The Singleton 100 card pool includes the cards for a number of different archetypes. Let’s cruise through the recent past and look at some combo decks that have done well in the recent — and not so recent — past. I’ll start with Legacy. GP: Chicago just happened, and the Legacy card pool is similar to that of Online Classic.
Dredge:
It is not really a combo deck, but it plays like one. It can also, in Classic and Legacy, accomplish the turn 1 kill. Of course, that build relies fairly heavily on Lion’s Eye Diamond, which is banned in Singleton 100. (S100 from here on — I’m tired of typing Singleton, and I have only just started.) But there is a bigger problem: look at this sample list, from GP Chicago. With Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, and Stinkweed Imp, it has 11 dredge cards — that’s 18% dredge cards. Even if our S100 deck ran every single dredge card printed, it would only have 14% Dredge cards, and that includes Dakmor Salvage and Necroplasm. Moreover, between Breakthrough, Cabal Therapy, Putrid Imp and Careful Study, Dredge decks have 14 ways of getting a dredge cards into the graveyard on turn 1. That’s 23% of the deck — and totally impossible in S100. The cards simply don’t exist in great enough quantity.
Worse yet, the kill for the dredge deck involved dumping several Narcomoebas into the graveyard to power Dread Return for the Flame-kin Zealot. Even if you could find the Zealot, you will have trouble getting three creatures. Only one of them can be a Narcomoeba.
Storm:
The highest-finishing combo deck at GP: Chicago was Ad Nauseam Tendrils, a/k/a ANT. ANT uses a whole lot of low casting cost cards that can be drawn with Ad Nauseam, including some card drawing, simple tutors and a bunch of mana acceleration. I really mean a bunch of mana acceleration: it has 11 mox equivalents plus 10 Dark Ritual equivalents. That’s a lot of redundancy, and pretty much impossible in S100.
Other formats tend to rely on Mind’s Desire to power Storm decks. (Not Legacy — Mind’s Desire is banned there.) Extended TEPS decks “go off” by hitting a second Mind’s Desire with the first Mind’s Desire, which cannot happen in a singleton format. In Vintage, the classic Grim Long decks ran only a single Mind’s Desire, plus a bunch of cards that cannot be played in online Classic, like the Power Nine and all the good tutors (which are banned in S100.)
Another Storm deck that saw a bunch of play was Dragonstorm, which fetched four Bogardan Hellkites in Standard, or four Kokoshu in Extended. It should be pretty obvious why that does not work in Singleton.
However, I have found one way to win with Storm. If you have Future Sight and Sensei’s Divining Top in play, you can draw a card, then replay the Top. If you also have Helm of Awakening, you can play the Top for free, which basically lets you draw your deck. After playing the Top a couple dozen times, you can find Tendrils or Agony or Brain Freeze and win the game.
At this point it is probably worthwhile to list the tutors that we can play. The really good ones, like Vampiric Tutor, Intuition, and Gifts Ungiven are banned. Demonic Tutor, soon to arrive in the Divine vs Demonic package, is not — at least not for now. Mystical Tutor, Mystical Teachings, Enlightened Tutor, Merchant Scroll and the like are available. Chaining Merchant Scroll into Mystical into Enlightened to find the Helm is slow, but it can work. We can also play Trinket Mage to get the Top, and Counterbalance because it combos well with Top. However, Counterbalance is not as good in S100 as in Extended because the mana costs in S100 vary much more widely.
We now have sideboards in S100, which means that we can now run the Wishes. Burning Wish was an excellent addition to a lot of combo decks, because adding four Burning Wishes and sticking a Mind’s Desire in the sideboard gave you the equivalent of seven maindeck Desires. However, this is a singleton format.
Dead to the Ban Hammer:
I should mention a few great decks that just do not make it in, because critical parts are missing. Bomberman, which runs Auriok Salvagers and goes infinite with Black Lotus and/or Lion’s Eye Diamond, does not without them. Imperial Painter / Grindstone does nothing much without Grindstone. Flash decks don’t work without Flash, and Loam decks — well, you get the idea.
Others just die to lack of redundancy. For example, a classic deck like High Tide is a lot less interesting when you can only run one copy of High Tide.
When I first started playing tournament Magic, the big threat combo decks were Trix in Extended and Sabre Bargain in Standard. Both of these abused Necropotence or its “fixed” equivalent, Yawgmoth’s Bargain. They also relied on cards from Urza’s Saga, like Donate and, well, Yawgmoth’s Bargain. Urza’s Saga is still a few years off online.
Classic does have a Necropotence-based combo deck. It’s called NecroSpike, and wins by Necroing into cards like Soul Spike. There is an example here — check out the third place deck. Once again, however, the deck cannot function in S100. Singleton means that you are unlikely to draw a Soul Spike in the first 19 cards you draw off Necro — which means you have to play a lot of other, less useful cards to fill out the list. The result is way too inconsistent. It is either crap unless you can find Necro (remember, the best tutors are banned), or not focused enough on finding Necro.
I have seen an online Classic deck sporting the Earthcraft / Squirrels’ Nest infinite creature combo. You can also create an infinite mana combo with a basic land, Fertile Ground and/or Heartbeat of Spring, and Horseshoe Crab. You just need the land to produce at least two mana a turn. If both mana are Blue, then equipping the Horseshoe Crab with a ping attachment — like Viridian Longbow — lets it deal infinite damage.
If you can enchant something that produces U plus at least one more mana with Freed from the Real, you have an infinite mana engine. Back in the day, I had a silly little combo deck that used Simic Growth Chambers animated with Lifespark Spellbomb to generate infinite Green mana. Cards like Nature’s Revolt also work. Slapping it on a card like Gilded Lotus is even better, but you need either Karn, Silver Golem, Karn’s Touch, or March of the Machines to make that work, and the first two are not yet available online. This combo is fragile beyond belief, so I have not seen this actually played outside of casual and multiplayer.
Years ago, I used an Intruder Alarm, Susquta Firewalker, Sabre Ants, and Bravado deck to place second in a large Vintage tournament. That was, indeed, a long time ago, and half those cards are not available. However, Intruder Alarm can power a bunch of other combos. Intruder Alarm, Squirrel’s Nest, and something to animate the enchanted land can produce infinite Squirrels. Soul Foundry imprinted with a zero-mana creature like Ornithopter and Intruder Alarm can produce an infinite number of creatures if you can animate the Foundry. Imprinting it with a Noble Hierarch is better — get the first NH produced by the Foundry over its summoning sickness, have the Intruder Alarm in play and animate the Soul’s Foundry — it will produce an infinite number of Hierarchs, then the initial one can swing for an infinite amount of damage because of all the Exalted pumps. Note that this actually works better with another mana creature in play — then the combo creates infinite mana.
I’ll skip the Stonybrook Schoolmaster / Silvergill Douser / Intruder Alarm combos. Some things are just too unlikely. Well — maybe not, I may have a Viridian Longbow in the deck for other purposes. The Schoolmaster may stay.
Any combo producing infinite mana, though, can use cards like Flash of Insight to draw the entire deck and find a win condition.
Worldgorger Dragon, when animated with a resurrection aura like Animate Dead, will cause a loop which brings all your lands into and out of play. Tapping them again in response to the loop lets you get infinite mana. The combo works, but one critical piece is not yet online: Bazaar of Baghdad. With the Bazaar and the dragon combo, you can mill your entire library into the graveyard, then reanimate something that can let you win, like Ambassador Laquatus, Flamewave Invoker, or Shivan Hellkite.
S100 does allow us some “tutors” that put cards in the graveyard. Entomb is legal, as is Buried Alive. Cards like Buried Alive can do double duty, if you also run Eternal Witness and Genesis.
Silliness:
A few cards let you win on your upkeep, if certain cards are in play. The classic is Battle of Wits. At first I had blown this off as ridiculous, since the format was 100 card singleton. However, rereading the rules says that 100 cards is the minimum, not a requirement. I guess it could work, but I’m not going there.
I am also not going to go into a lot of depth on Coalition Victory / Transguild Courier or Mortal Combat / Hermit Druid decks. Yes, technically, they do work, but they require a lot of effort to build, and the tutors necessary to find the key components just are not present. You have Enlightened Tutor, Worldly Tutor, and Eladamri’s Call, but not enough else. S100 provides only a 7% chance of having any given card in hand, and that just won’t cut it.
Other two card combo decks are also possible, and might work if you can find the pieces. Equipping Eater of the Dead with a ping — like Viridian Longbow or Arcane Teachings — creates an infinite damage engine. (I think — let me check Oracle. Wait — the current wording has the untap as part of the resolution. No infinite damage. Bummer. Still, I do like the artwork.) The Viridian Longbow, at least, can also work with the Intruder Alarm combos. For that matter, Leyline of the Void and Helm of Obedience are a nice little combo, but the odds of getting Leyline in your opening hand are vanishingly small. Without that, the combo is pretty bad.
Tutors
We have a ton of possible combos, but unless we can get the pieces when we need them, the deck will consist of a huge pile of epic fail. (Yes, mixed metaphor, but the whole point is inconsistency, right?) Let’s look at what we have.
Diabolic Tutor (but so slow…)
Diabolic Intent (we may not have enough creatures)
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Eladamri’s Call
Enlightened Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Sterling Grove
Sylvan Scrying
Tainted Pact (amazing in singleton)
Worldly Tutor
While they are not exactly tutors, with infinite mana cards like Flash of Insight will find a kill. Braingeyser is a kill in itself.
Those are a fairly nice set of tutors, but they are not all that many or all that great. Remember, we are talking about Singleton, so we can’t run more than one copy of any of them. We are also talking about a 100 card deck, so they are diluted.
The only option is to run all the combos, and hope that we can assemble at least one in time to win.
Kills
The kill cards are a mix. Here are the ones that can kill an opponent if you have your infinite mana engine running.
Braingeyser
Ghitu Fire
Magma Mine
Pinnacle Helix (so bad)
Rocket Launcher (not in the pool, but I have a thing about the Mirrodin replacement.)
Ambassador Laquatus
Shivan Hellkite
Other kills:
Viridian Longbow on Eater of the Dead / Horseshoe Crab, or with Intruder Alarm
Infinite squirrels
Tendrils of Agony after storm
I’m probably missing something. Here’s the draft decklist. I have not spent much time playing this.
Lands
2 Forest
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Breeding Pool
1 City of Brass
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Flood Plain
1 Flooded Strand
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Godless Shrine
1 Grand Coliseum
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Mountain Valley
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Savannah
1 Soldevi Excavations
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Grounds
1 Taiga
1 Temple Garden
1 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Watery Grave
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
Creatures
1 Ambassador Laquatus
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fyndhorn Elf
1 Genesis
1 Horseshoe Crab
1 Llanowar Elf
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Ornithopter
1 Shield Sphere
1 Shivan Hellkite
1 Stonybrook Schoolmaster
1 Trinket Mage
1 Vine Trellis
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Worldgorger Dragon
Artifacts
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Dimir Signet
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Izzet Signet
1 Lifespark Spellbomb
1 Magma Mine
1 Mox Diamond
1 Rocket Launcher
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Simic Signet
1 Soul Foundry
1 Staff of Domination
1 Viridian Longbow
Enchantments
1 Dawn’s Reflection
1 Earthcraft
1 Fertile Ground
1 Freed from the Real
1 Future Sight
1 Heartbeat of Spring
1 Helix Pinnacle
1 Intruder Alarm
1 Mana Reflection
1 March of the Machines
1 Mirari’s Wake
1 Nature’s Revolt
1 Squirrel’s Nest
Sorceries
1 Animate Dead
1 Braingeyser
1 Buried Alive
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ghitu Fire
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Necromancy
1 Ponder
1 Tendrils of Agony
Instants
1 Animate Dead
1 Braingeyser
1 Buried Alive
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ghitu Fire
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Necromancy
1 Ponder
1 Tendrils of Agony
I haven’t played this seriously, yet. I don’t even own some of these cards (e.g. Eladamri’s Call), and I have other cards higher up on my “must get” list. Playing it with a placeholder in the slot is sub-optimal. Likewise, Wall of Blossoms is not yet online (but will be shortly). I stuck another landcycler in that slot.
The best part of this deck is that it feels like a big box of tinker toys. You can build so many different combos, in so many different ways that games resemble a Magic the Puzzling situation. In that respect, it is pretty cool.
But…
In his article, Tarmotog wondered why aggro and control decks predominated. The reason is that, in a singleton format which is by nature inconsistent on a card by card basis, those decks can be consistent through redundancy. An aggro deck needs something like the following:
10-15 potent one-drops
10-15 powerful two-drops
10-15 good three-drops
A handful of finishers with reach
15-20 burn spells
Some utility or card drawing
Land
It isn’t really all that hard to fill those slots. It looks like it will be even easier once we have Alara Reborn in the card pool. The same thing for a control deck. You have Force Spike and Dismiss and Counterspell and Mana Leak and Rune Snag and Remand and Memory Lapse and Force of Will and on and on.
And that is the problem.
My combo deck can, with some appearance of consistency, pull off a game-ending combo — often before aggro can kill it. However, the race is tight (tighter without some of the good tutors, but that’s life). The problem is that, when you finally find the last piece of the puzzle, control will always have the counter in hand. Always. Control has way too many answers, and combo can’t fight back — it needs all its space for combo pieces. Aggro can overwhelm control, sometimes. This pile o’ combo cannot.
Besides, the deck has another problem. Look at a couple of opening hands. Do you keep?
Sacred Foundry
Vine Trellis
Windswept Heath
Soldevi Excavations
Flooded Strand
Horseshoe Crab
Enlightened Tutor
Genesis
Polluted Delta
Fertile Ground
Gemstone Mine
Fyndhorn Elf
Godless Shrine
Braingeyser
Freed from the Real
Windswept Heath
Godless Shrine
Tainted Pact
Enlightened Tutor
Mana Reflection
Blood Crypt
If you don’t keep, will six cards be any better?
That’s the problem. And that’s why Singleton 100 will not have a combo deck anytime soon.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO
…
One more thing: It just occurred to me that you might be able to do something with Doomsday. It gets around the whole “too many cards” issue. I’ll have to think about that…